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posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday August 11 2020, @07:26PM   Printer-friendly
from the the-plight-of-the-gig-economy-worker dept.

California Judge Rules Uber and Lyft to Immediately Classify Drivers as Employees:

A California court issued a preliminary injuction on Monday, ordering Uber and Lyft to immediately reclassify Uber and Lyft ride-share drivers as employees, in a highly anticipated decision that follows a months-long battle between the state of California and the gig economy companies.

The San Francisco Superior Court judge said the companies must begin complying within 10 days.

In May, California's attorney general Xavier Becerra, alongside the cities of San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego, sued Uber and Lyft, arguing that the companies have been violating law by misclassifying Uber and Lyft drivers as independent contractors since January 1 when a state law known as AB5 went into effect.

In June, Becerra filed a request for a preliminary injunction, arguing that drivers are currently enduring such significant damages that waiting until the end of litigation would cause irreparable harm.

Responding to news of the preliminary injunction, attorney general Becerra said, "The court has weighed in and agreed: Uber and Lyft need to put a stop to unlawful misclassification of their drivers while our litigation continues. While this fight still has a long way to go, we're pushing ahead to make sure the people of California get the workplace protections they deserve."


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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday August 13 2020, @04:10AM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday August 13 2020, @04:10AM (#1035986) Journal

    That argument is why we can't have nice things. All the morons crying about their freedoms while ignoring the fact that living in society involves giving up some freedom in order to have nice things.

    Let's take a hard look at that trade.

    In this case, we have taxis where one could earn a decent living.

    And taxi cartels where one could earn an indecent living at the expense of anyone needing a ride hailing service. So a few tens of thousands of "decent" jobs and taxi cartels versus...

    The other end of the trade are the "morons crying about their freedoms". So how many "morons" are there giving up their freedoms (as opposed to crying about it) for this scheme? Why it's everybody in California. As Tokolosh correctly noted, every Californian has just had their freedom to choose their contractual relationships taken away from them because the gig economy isn't good for taxi cartels and a few tens of thousands of taxi drivers. Actual ride sharing drivers just had their contract jobs taken away from them. Similarly, because the result cluster is going to result in a substantial reduction in supply of ride hailing services, it's a huge hit for anyone using those services, which is more than just everyone living in California.

    So it's another California mess where everyone is harmed to benefit a lucky few. As I noted elsewhere, this is economic suicide by a thousand cuts. Something like AB5 in a vacuum isn't going to end the California economy, but in concert with a thousand other stupid, greedy laws, it'll do that economy in.

    As for the drivers, you're fooling yourself if you think that drivers have meaningful choice in the matter.

    Despite your assurance that we're fools for believing otherwise, it remains that those gig economy drivers do indeed have meaningful choice.

    The gig economy exists in large part as a byproduct of companies failing to pay living wages

    The gig economy exists because: a) they provide a service niche that people want, b) existing businesses don't cover it adequately, and c) in situations where they allegedly "broke all the relevant laws", the customers desperately needed someone to bypass those "relevant" laws. What I think most tragic about this situation is that emerging markets like ride hailing could have been used as a roadmap to ending bad law and regulation. Instead, they doubled down and have now neutered the gig economy model even in places where it was no such alleged threat to "nice things".